Motivated by the potential for significant energy savings from reduced cooling and heating loads, smart window technology has become significant in design and outfitting of commercial and residential buildings as well as in the automotive industry. In particular, smart glass using a suspended particle device (SPD) adapted for controlling the transmission of radiation would provide benefits in instant and precise light control, long lifetime, and cost-effectiveness. Such devices have numerous applications, for example, architectural windows for commercial buildings and residences, windows for automotive vehicles, boats, trains, planes and spacecraft, electronic displays, filters for lamps, cameras, windows, sunroofs, toys, sun-visors, and eyeglasses.
Current conventional techniques to fabricate SPD-based smart windows use one-dimensional needle or rod shaped dichroic materials whose alignment enables the light to pass through in the presence of applied electric field. However, the conventional technology does not provide tunability to colorations accompanied with transparency or translucence. Moreover, the choice of materials for use in conventional SPD-based smart windows is limited due to the difficulty of fabrication of rod-shaped materials with dichroic properties.
Thus, it would be desirable to improve the versatility and functionality of SPD-based smart windows. Moreover, it would be desirable to develop a novel method to tune the transparency of the smart glass window without loss in performance.